The book details the almost two-year struggle for survival endured by the twenty-eight man crew of the exploration ship Endurance. The ship was beset and eventually crushed by ice floes in the Weddell Sea, leaving the men stranded on the pack ice. All in all, the crew drifted on a series of ice floes for just over a year, facing a second survival crisis when their final floe melted into the cold salty water that surrounded it. They had salvaged three small ship’s boats, and were able to launch them into the Southern Ocean. The castaways managed to land themselves safely on Elephant Island, off the coast of Antarctica. Shackleton then led a crew of five aboard the James Caird, the best surviving open boat, through the Drake Passage, even though there were no sun appearances for precise navigation. Through the dead-reckoning skills of Shackleton and his navigator, Frank Worsley, the bedraggled party reached South Georgia Island 650 nautical miles away, their boat barely making landfall in a sinking condition. Shackleton then led two of those men on the first successful overland crossing of South Georgia. Three months later, he was finally able to rescue the remaining crew members they had left behind on Elephant Island.
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